I Got Knocked Down (But I Got Up Again)

I had a moment of doubt recently.

A doozy of doubt.

I hadn’t been shaken like that in a long while.

It was quiet, but it rippled fast—faster than I expected.

Even after I admitted to my husband, “I lost a little hope,”

my own knowing didn’t reach me right away.

Not as quickly as I thought it would.

This one was tricky.

And in hindsight, that’s usually a sign.

The trickiest moments are often laced with the deepest breakthroughs—

if you reach for them.

What I’ve learned is that doubt isn’t always a detour.

Sometimes it’s the doorway.

It asks you to pause—not because you’ve lost your way,

but because something old and outdated is loosening its grip.

And if you’re still enough,

you can feel it—

the pattern, the fear, the storyline

that’s been shaken awake and placed front and center.

That moment of “I’ve lost hope”?

It wasn’t collapse.

It was contact.

Contact with the part of me that, in hindsight, needed to be awakened.

Clarity doesn’t always arrive on time.

Not on your time.

Not on mine either.

Sometimes it shows up as a whisper

at the bottom of your doubt.

Not when you force your way through—

but when you stop trying to fix the feeling

and start letting it speak.

I let it speak.

It exhausted my body and clouded my thinking.

But I trusted the process.

I observed it.

I felt it safely, knowing that at the end of the day(s), it would pass.

And it did.

Clarity arrived—about 37 hours later.

The shift happened peacefully.

No lightning bolt.

No perfect plan.

Just a breath.

A deeper found truth rising beneath the old noise.

It didn’t tell me what to do next.

It simply reminded me of who I no longer was.

And from that knowing,

Movement felt more inviting.

In this instance, it was as simple as noticing my thoughts and choosing which ones were worth entertaining. I’ve come to see it as separating the spoiled with the fresh.

It’s like tethering a rope back together—

each strand pulled from a deeper sense of self.

The part of me already on the other side,

feeding me truth one thread at a time

to build the bridge back to who I know myself to be.

Not from panic.

Not from proving.

Not even from seeking comfort.

But from the quiet place where readiness lives.

I’m allowing the part of me that builds from values, morals, and rewired beliefs—

not the part handed down

but the ones reclaimed.

So, if you’re in that space—

The murky, wobbly, almost-gave-up kind of space..

Let this be your reminder:

You haven’t gone backwards.

You’ve just gone deeper.

And deeper is where the real shift begins.